In an ironic move, privacy expert Lauren Weinstein has exposed MTV’s private plans to do a fraudulent debate show whose purpose is to humiliate its guests.
Weinstein, who was invited on the show, did some checking before accepting. Here is what he found:
Not really a debate at all, the show is actually a program for Comedy Central (yes, an MTV/Viacom network) called “Crossballs” — and its sole purpose is the embarrassment and humiliation of the expert guests who are brought on expecting a legitimate discussion program.
Crossballs is a rigged “reality” show, where real guests, who have been kept in the dark about the show’s real format, are paired off against actors (playing the debate opponents) for the amusement of the live audience. The stories I read from persons recently on the show included descriptions of crude, sexually-oriented verbal attacks (and worse, like being handed various sexual “apparatus”) and concerns that their reputations would be ruined once the shows aired [source].
While we can all agree that this is a shameful abuse of the talk-show format, what I want to know is: How is this any different (except in degree) from regular news shows?
I’ve done enough TV interviews to know that guests are regularly set up by news organizations for purposes of humiliating them and ridiculing their points of view.
(WARNING: I found the Weinstein story through another site that only linked the relevant page, which I have linked, but I wouldn’t go poking around on the site unless you want to see lots of disturbing Iraq prisoner abuse photos elsewhere on it.)
